UX Principles for Higher-Converting Email and Landing Pages

Kenny Rosenberg, BVAccel

Author Bio

Kenny is the “unicorn” of BVAccel – he has one of the strongest combined design and development skill sets in the industry. He has won extensive awards, including being named one of the top Shopify developers of 2013 and has worked with huge brands, such as RedBull, Hallmark, HK Army, MVMT Watches, Kopari Beauty and more. He works closely with the internal design and development team members at BVAccel, and manages the execution of all project requirements.

The fast-paced digital era has intensified the competition for the small windows of opportunity to grab the attention of the modern-day consumer.

Seth Godin’s Purple Cow analogy, which illustrates the importance of being remarkable to stand out in the crowd, is as relevant as it was ten years ago. Ironically, in this era, the best way for your email campaigns to stand out is with clarity. A simple headline and clear value proposition breeds authenticity that bolsters credibility behind the product or service you’re offering.

Here are five UX principles that can help you maximize the clarity of your email campaigns and landing pages.

Instant Gratification

Any time a user clicks, taps or engages in any calls-to-action, they should be rewarded with exactly what they expect to receive. Ensure button labels and promotional messaging are explicit with a clear incentive for the user to justify their efforts to engage.
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Interactive Content

GIFs never went out of style, and they’re quite effective for email engagement. Use them to elevate your visual content, add personality or command the user’s attention. Ecommerce brands can also use GIFs to showcase a wide array of product imagery within the same container. Gifcreator.me is an easy-to-use generator to quickly create your own optimized GIFs.

MVMTWatches.com entices customers by presenting all available colors from their recent launch.

Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS)

Gone are the days of cheesy sales lines, giant red arrows and walls of text to drive conversions. In an era of digital noise, users find satisfaction when encountering a digestible landing page that instantly communicates what they’re looking at, why they need it and how to get it. Create visual hierarchy to help make content scannable, and feature a single, obvious call-to-action.

Muzzleapp.com oozes simplicity with clear benefits.

Scarcity

Let customers know that supplies are limited or won’t be available for long. This tactic makes purchases seem much more valuable, and shoppers often enjoy the challenge of competing to get their hands on such scarce products. Think of those limited-edition sneakers, the ones that cause people to wait in virtual waiting rooms, just to get their hands on a pair.

Uber does this well, offering a promotion for a limited time and giving the user a sense of urgency to use it before the promotion ends.

But don’t create a false sense of scarcity or importance. If done poorly, your attempt to create excitement and demand around your product could affect the reputation of your business and spread distrust among your customer base.

Personalization

There’s nothing more rewarding as a customer than feeling that a merchant really knows you –what you like, what you’re interested in and how to make your shopping experience that much better. An easy way to personalize is to separate traffic based on gender – create landing pages for men and for women.

Greats does a phenomenal job with this. Their number one priority isn’t to collect your email address for a newsletter sign-up but rather to learn whether you’re male or female.

Then they effectively use this information later on to serve you the right landing page and personalize your shopping experience.

Personalizing your customers’ experience for their future shopping sprees will only increase the number of conversions and decrease abandoned carts. And it will make your customers feel like you really know them.

You don’t need to focus on all of these initiatives at once. Choose the one you think will have the biggest impact on your business and create higher-converting emails and landing pages. Then move on to the next. Each of these tips can help you bring in more conversions and delight your customers along the way.

As for animated GIFs in emails, how can I keep the KBs low and still have quality content? Home Depot’s Garden Club has some awesome gifs with low KBs – and your example above is under 500kb. Any suggestions for developing this content and compressing it correctly?

1) Export up to 4 JPEG frames and compress each image separately through http://www.tinypng.com. If you have Photoshop, you can also reduce significant image size with the Posterize filter. Image => Adjustments => Posterize.

2) Upload each compressed image to http://www.gifmaker.me – This site allows you to establish your GIF sequence along with setting up animation speeds. Click ‘Create GIF Animation’ and you’ll be able to download your GIF and/or add another layer of image compression if need be.